NSAB comes up with traceability to help WhatsApp

The government has been insisting on the traceability of WhatsApp messages, especially after misinformation and rumours floating had led to a spate of lynchings in 2018. Gulveen Aulakh | ET Bureau | Updated: July 01, 2019, 11:21 IST

India could well have a locally developed solution to the message traceability dispute with social media major WhatsApp.

Prof. V Kamakoti of IIT Madras, a member of the National Security Advisory Board (NSAB) which advises the PMO on security matters, said the solution would help WhatsApp to provide the phone number of the sender of a message, without tampering with the encryption which is critical to the Facebook-owned popular chat app.

Talking to ET, Kamakoti said WhatsApp can “easily” meet India's demand to trace each message on the messaging platform if it is ready to work with the NSAB. "We are ready to work with WhatsApp in case they need any help in getting this implemented... This message has been conveyed to WhatsApp," he said.

The expert on artificial intelligence and cyber space said the solution would not require WhatsApp to read the messages at any stage, thus keeping its encryption in place while at the same time avoiding violating any privacy rights.

"A request to WhatsApp is that the phone number of the author of a message be made part of the message whenever it is created," he said. “Then the author's phone number ‘travels’ as part of the encrypted message as and when it is forwarded multiple times from one recipient to the next. This enables the recipients of a message to know the phone number of the author so that they can clarify or verify about the contents of a message from its author. WhatsApp does not need to open or read the messages to enable this feature,” he said.

The government has been insisting on the traceability of WhatsApp messages, especially after misinformation and rumours floating on the platform had led to a spate of lynchings in 2018. The US company has pushed back, saying it would infringe on the privacy of its users. Besides, it would have to change its entire architecture to embed elements to trace messages. India is the largest market for WhatsApp with 350-400 million people using the messaging application.

Further explaining the mechanism, Kamakoti said when the creator of the message first sends it to his contact(s), these contact(s) will know who the author is, even in the current version of WhatsApp.

Further, if the author of a message has no objection to these contact( s) forwarding the message to others, then there is no issue with what is proposed. If the author has an objection and yet the receiver forwards it, then it is a breach of privacy between the two parties.

Here, the social media platform is not responsible for it. In addition, suppose the author wants that the message should not be forwarded by the recipients, then he/she can be provided an option to choose between "forward-able/not forwardable" at the time of creation of the message.

This needs only one bit -- a fraction of a byte -- to be added to the message, which does not allow the receiver to forward it further.